Juried Member Show - Awards and Reception (Part Two) - the Winning Paintings!

(photo courtesy of John Cusick)

After spending about seven hours on the blog the other day I decided to take a break from blogging yesterday. But here is the next post finally - photos of our winning artists with their paintings! The artwork was amazing and I can see why our judge or juror, Ann Manry Kenyon, had this to say about our show:

Oh the pain of it all - to try to choose between all these lovely pieces.There are those shimmering with color that beg "pick me, pick me", yet the next painting's composition is exquisite. Each piece allows me a tiny peek inside the artist's soul...Alas, having been given my orders to chose only eight pieces, I agonized. For really each of the 76 pieces had their own element of Beauty.

(note the number 76 is for all those entered in the show, including those juried out, not the number actually hung).

The next post in the series will show *all* of the paintings that were hung in our show, including better shots of the winning works! Meanwhile, here again are our winners, this time with their winning paintings. Again a big congratulations to ALL of them.

Best of Show:

 ‘Hijinx at the Helm’, by Corinne Samuels

First Place:

 ‘East Point’ by Wendy Devarieux

Second Place:

 ‘Last Day of Summer’ by Patrick Mahoney

Third Place:

 ‘Just After Dawn’ by Lyn Asselta

Merit Awards:

‘Nightfall Hunting Island’ by Eve Miller

‘South Creek’ by Steve Johnson

‘One Pair, Both Red’ by Rick Peterson

‘Ximenez-Fatio House’, by Cindy Pierson

Lyn Asselta Founders Award:

            ‘New Day, New Year’ by Sherri Lewis-Seals

People’s Choice Awards:

            ‘Handyman’ by Cindy Pierson

‘Kelsey’ by Corinne Samuels

Stay tuned for the next installment. 

Juried Member Show - Awards and Reception (Part One)

(photo courtesy of John Cusick)

Friday night was certainly a great occasion for all those who made it to our third annual Juried Member Show awards ceremony and reception. In fact the event was so awesome that one mere blog post just can't do it justice, and so I think I will have to break it up into multiples - maybe three will do it. You'll just have to hold your breath to see the artwork. The artwork will come up in following posts.

Those who were with us last year, and who have attended our meetings, know what a nice gallery space it is at Ponte Vedra, not to mention that they hang the show for us. As anyone who has ever done it knows, hanging the show is just about the hardest part of the whole process, so having it done for us is a big plus!

As in previous years our members really "stepped up to the plate" in providing us with outstanding food for the reception.

There was plenty for all of the large crowd who attended, and a wonderful variety as well.

And some of our members demonstrated that their artistry extends far beyond pastels!

(photo courtesy of John Cusick) 

We had a great turnout of artists, friends, family members.

I heard nothing but praise about the artwork, and about the food as well, :-)

(photo courtesy of John Cusick)

This year there were a few seats available to rest a bit, but I think next time we might try to have even a few more!

There were some there who were also impressed by the beautiful ribbons we had to award, and couldn't wait to see who the winners were - but in addition to the lovely ribbons we had generous prizes of both cash and merchandise. I don't think any of our winners were unhappy with the prizes received.

We have to wait until the next post to actually see the paintings from the show, but here are all the winners.

Congratulations to our winners:

Best of Show:

 ‘Hijinx at the Helm’, by Corinne Samuels

First Place:

 ‘East Point’ by Wendy Devarieux

(Wendy was unable to be with us Friday evening)

Second Place:

 ‘Last Day of Summer’ by Patrick Mahoney

Third Place:

 ‘Just After Dawn’ by Lyn Asselta

Merit Awards:

‘Nightfall Hunting Island’ by Eve Miller

(Eve was unable to be with us Friday evening)

‘South Creek’ by Steve Johnson

(Steve was unable to be with us Friday evening)

‘One Pair, Both Red’ by Rick Petersen

‘Ximenez-Fatio House’, by Cindy Pierson

People’s Choice Awards:

            ‘Handyman’ by Cindy Pierson

            ‘Kelsey’ by Corinne Samuels

And our founder and current co-President was surprised by the new award the members created in her honor, the Founders Award.

Lyn Asselta Founders Award:

            ‘New Day, New Year’ by Sherri Lewis-Seals

Stay tuned for the next post and you will get to see the wonderful award-winning artwork.

May is coming - bring your pastels!

What: May general meeting
When: Saturday, May 2, 10 AM to noon
Where: Cultural Center at Ponte Vedra Beach

Yes everyone, the posts about our WONDERFUL member juried show will be available shortly, but in the meantime it's almost MAY, and that means our next upcoming member general meeting is almost here as well. This is going to be a "hands on" meeting for everyone so you need to bring your pastels with you.

Please bring a backing board, a simple reference photo, a sheet of your favorite paper, approx. 8 x 10, and 3-4 values of two different complementary colors, preferably hard pastels, but not your softest pastels. (for example: 3 sticks of violet-light, medium and dark and 3 sticks of yellow, light, medium and dark.) Please bring something other than Terry Ludwig pastels.

Why the Terry Ludwig restriction? Lyn has this to say:

I've had a couple people ask why they shouldn't bring Terry Ludwigs....
I personally LOVE Terry Ludwigs, but for this particular exercise, I don't want you filling up the tooth of your paper too quickly.   Hence the request for harder pastels of any kind (NuPastel, Faber Castell, Caran d'Ache, Rembrandt, possibly even some Unison or Mt. Vision)

It should be a lot of fun. Hope to see many of you there this Saturday.

Spring Park - another awesome day

When you plan for a plein air event months in advance you never know what you will have on the day.  Spring Park, though, seemed to be able to cover any eventuality - lovely vistas of course, but plenty of shade for hotter days, lots of covered shelter in case of rain.

But once again we were lucky. It was in the upper 60s and breezy when we arrived, just about perfect. It did warm to the upper 70s as the morning wore on, but the shade and the breeze kept everyone comfortable. The threatened early afternoon thunderstorms never materialized.

Once again we had around a dozen folks who came up to paint with us. Several immediately set up prime spots inside the gazebo near the water's edge.

There were plenty of squirrels checking us out. They must get fed by park visitors as they were certainly bold and unafraid of humans.

Spring Park is big enough to offer plenty of options, but small enough that we could mostly see everyone and see what viewpoints they had chosen.

The views of the St. Johns River were of primary interest to most FCPS members however.

And most folks found spots to set up that allowed shade and comfort, but great views of the river.

Though others wandered along the stream up towards the iconic spring in Spring Park to find their inspiration.

There was certainly something for everyone, and easy walking if you were carrying all your plein air "stuff" while you checked it out.

This pair of sailboats riding at anchor seemed to capture the imagination of more than one FCPS'er.

As usual we broke for lunch about noon and had lunch and a show-and-tell under one of the cool and comfortable covered picnic pavilions. Below are works that were done, in various stages of completion of course, and some members even found time to do more than one painting.

More and more I'm seeing members working small on plein air days, which lends itself to multiple paintings if you choose. Quite a few of these were in the 5x7 or smaller size.

There was *one* issue that was completely unexpected. Since we were there for a full morning one of the key pluses was that the park featured not only ONE but TWO restrooms. And yet we got there only to find BOTH restrooms were locked, and remained so the entire morning. I live locally and go to Spring Park quite often, and I have never ever found the rest rooms locked whenever I went there. Talk about surprises ....

At any rate we have a member meeting coming up in May. Details will be posted on the blog later this month, but there are already details listed in the calendar which you can find by scrolling to the end of the blog. Check it out now if you like. It sounds like an interesting exercise in store for all.